Self-Defenestration
by stcrmpilot
Summary: The Doctor jumps out of a window, and Donna discovers he isn't quite as human as he seems.


"Hold still!"

The Doctor squirmed on the examination table, eager to get this over with and go back to infiltrating the governmental palace of the planet Tsi'tsi. "I am holding still!"

Donna fixed him with a glare that was impossible to argue with, and returned to roughly unbuttoning his dark blue dress shirt, now wet with blood. "You can't just jump through a bloody window, Doctor," she grumbled. "Much less one on the second story."

"Would you prefer it if I'd gotten myself shot?" he asked. He hissed as her fingers brushed a wound on the side of his stomach.

"Sorry. No, getting shot would be worse," she conceded. "But you could've at least landed on your feet and waited for me instead of rolling around on a carpet of glass bits for a bit before getting up and running a mile to the TARDIS."

Maybe she had a point, the Doctor thought. His entire left side was on fire with countless little cuts, and he could feel small shards of glass still embedded in his arms and legs. His suit was torn to shreds; he was only glad he'd had the good sense to land and roll instead of sprawling forward onto his hands, because he was gripping the edge of the examination table with a force that would have been very painful with his palms all cut up. Why did the Tsi'tsians have to be such artists? If they'd just used tempered glass in their buildings instead of their fancy copper-infused stuff, he probably wouldn't be feeling like whatever the reverse of a porcupine was right now.

"Or you could've just surrendered," Donna suggested. "I suppose it was inevitable, though, you do have a thing for dangling yourself off high places."

"I do not," he protested.

"The first time we met, you got us stuck on a roof for hours. Then you got me tied to a ceiling. Then, the next time, you nearly made both of us fall to our deaths out of a metal basket. Then–"

She stopped short, in the middle of peeling off one of his bloodied sleeves, and stared.

"What?" he asked, trying to find what she was looking at. "What, is it that bad?"

"Do you have orange blood?"

He blinked. "Well, it's really more a russet sort of–"

"Why do you have orange blood?"

"What do you mean, 'why'?" he said, incredulous. "Why wouldn't I?"

Donna sniffed, and returned to working off his oxford. "It's just weird."

"Well, I think it's weird that you have red blood," he countered. "Besides, it's really more red than orange."

"It's pretty orange." She helped him get his hands out of the sleeves and set aside the tattered shirt. "I thought it was just your shirt making it look like that." Then she refocused, and winced. "God, you look awful," she said, her lip curled in a grimace.

The Doctor looked down at his now bare torso, and cringed. The pain came back in full force at the sight of his wounds; most of the cuts were shallow but a few still bled copiously. His skin was smeared with half-dried coppery blood. Now he was quite sure that she'd been right: he should not have jumped out a window.

"Just get it over with," he muttered, shifting in his seat to try to ease the discomfort.

Donna complied with only a quiet _tsk_ and grabbed a pair of tweezers off the tray to his left. She started picking bits of glass out of his wounds, looking vaguely sick but making quick work of it anyway; it wasn't the grossest thing she'd done during their travels. He was trembling by the time she finished inspecting every cut, despite his efforts to keep still, his skin burning and his head spinning slightly.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, giving his uninjured right shoulder a squeeze. "Almost done."

He nodded, exhaling shakily. The pain wasn't so bad now that the glass was gone.

Donna used a warm wet cloth to clean up all the dried blood, wiping as gently as she could around the wounds, then sprayed most of his upper body with disinfectant. She bandaged the more serious cuts, stuck a few of the Doctor's favourite bright purple bandaids on the ones she couldn't wrap in gauze, and got him a glass of water before starting to clean up the medbay.

The Doctor took a look drink, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and sighed, "Thank you."

"Don't mention it." Donna set the tweezers and cloth back on the tray. Then she noticed the sticky orange-ish blood coating her fingertips, and cautiously brought her hand up to smell it.

"It's just blood, Donna," he said wearily.

Her eyes narrowed. "It doesn't smell like it. Is there even iron in this?"

"No, but I still wouldn't lick it if I were you."

She stared. "Why the hell would I lick it? You're the one who likes licking blood."

"When have I ever– oh. Well, that doesn't mean I like it, I was just analyzing the composition."

"Right. Bloody alien," she grumbled.

The Doctor huffed. "Can we go back outside now?"

"Fine. But let me wash off your weird orange not-blood first."

He waited impatiently as Donna scrubbed her hands in the sink; he was bouncing on his toes by the time she finished and walked back over, but the look on her face stopped him from bounding out of the medbay.

"You alright?" he asked, the smile fading from his face.

Donna bit her lip. "You got really hurt."

A pang of guilt pierced his hearts. "I'm sorry," he said, taking one of her hands in his. "I wasn't thinking. But I'm fine now, thanks to you."

"No, Doctor, don't do that," she ordered. "That was careless and dangerous. You can't just throw yourself around like that, you're gonna kill yourself. So if we're gonna go back out there, then you have to promise me you'll be more careful. Okay? I'm not losing you to a bloody window."

"Well, it was really more the ground that did it."

"Doctor," she warned.

The Doctor looked down at his feet and nodded sheepishly. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I'll be careful. Promise. I never meant to make you worry."

She gave a long-suffering sigh. "It's alright. I know you didn't. Just don't do it again."

Smiling reassuringly, he pulled her into his arms and she hugged him back gently, careful of his injuries. They stayed like that for a moment before he drew back and grabbed her hand, marching for the exit.

"Right!" he exclaimed. "Let's steal some state secrets! Oh, try saying that ten times fast." And he did, quite successfully, before Donna interrupted him.

"Doctor," she said, "d'you maybe want to put on a shirt first?"

"Hmm?" He looked down. "Oh, right! Good idea, Donna Noble, brilliant. Shirt first." He redirected his course towards his bedroom.

"Hey Doctor?" Donna asked, jogging to keep up.

"Yeah?"

"If you've got orangey–"

"It's not orange!"

"– _russet_ blood," she corrected, somewhat mockingly, "then are you, like, half beetle?"

The Doctor groaned. She wasn't going to let this go, was she?


End file.
